I've seen that tactic to try to discredit real, valid concerns with immigration, either by lumping it with racism (which definitely exists, but is not the only argument against unfettered immigration), or by pretending something else is the problem (something else may also be a problem, but that doesn't make the problems that people are worried about with high levels of immigration invalid).
In my understanding, the backlash against immigration in Canada is relatively recent, and it's basically caused by the fact that Canada took in a huge number of immigrants, historically speaking, in recent years. This results in:
1. People feeling likes many immigrant communities are creating enclaves instead of adopting the culture of Canada. 2. Many recent immigrants are unskilled, resulting in a larger burden on provincial-based social services.
When you couple that with astronomical housing prices and a stagnant economy with rising unemployment where many people see less opportunity, it's not hard to see why citizens are demanding lower rates of immigration.
Every immigrant community creates enclaves. Quebec is an enclave the size of a province.
> Many recent immigrants are unskilled, resulting in a larger burden on provincial-based social services.
I can find NO evidence for this whatsoever, do you have any?
The anger should be aimed at the rich in Canada abusing the system, as well as the paid for politicians enabling the abuse. It shouldn’t be aimed at the newcomers.
Wow. Wow, wow, wow, you're in need of a major history lesson, like how the British first basically committed genocide with the expulsion of the Acadia French, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians, and then when they realized that was a collosal fuck up they explicitly put policies in place to not expel the rest of the French in Quebec and deliberately treat them as second class citizens.
The French that founded Quebec where here predated the English that eventually founded the county of Upper / Lower Canada... You might have a misunderstanding of what the term immigrant means.
It is so ignorant of the definition I don't even know how to find common ground.
When you compare Canada, the US or some of the higher immigration countries in Europe to developed countries without immigration you'd wish you'd have price increase problems.
Japan, sometimes hailed as an alternative to immigration is now so poor and old that middle class Westerners travel there like they traveled to a middle income country twenty years ago. If you think Canada is stagnant you haven't been to places where a quarter of the population is aged over 60.
Immigration problems and friction are real but they absolutely pale to the economic disaster that low birth rate aging economies experience. Without significant migration you're looking forward to decades of deflation, politics dominated by people who raise pensions and basically no entrepreneurship. Cultural and housing problems are fixable (just build more housing), dying out is not.
Prices feel like a middle income country, but that is just the Yen sucking. Otherwise it feels very first world.
No it isn't. In purchasing power terms Japan has been, or is about to be overtaken by Poland and Slovakia [1]. This is largely due to demographics and the declining share of the working age population. There is nothing that impoverishes countries more. Gradual decline feels fine for a while, until it doesn't when the bulk of the workforce ages out.
[1]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/07/po...
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/11/12/perceptions-of...
Also, a quick googling suggests both Poland and Japan both have fertility rates around 1.2. Working age of Poland is 65% of the population vs 60% for Japan. So a bit worse.
We've been through this endless times through history. When one ethnic group is exterminated, they are still dead even if strangers move into their land and dwellings. Whether that is done through war, disease or economic strangling of the youth. All has the same result and it is a crime against humanity and a crime against God.
As long as the Japanese are allowed to exist, they can flourish again. Not if they've been replaced by different people. It's the same for all of us in the world.
70%. Thats not "Something else" thats "The majority of the issue"
Immigration is already controlled here so that its roughly just backfill for population growth targets. State governments are supposed to release enough land to meet population growth targets. They have never met these land release targets.
So "Immigration" is already meant to be factored in as one of many factors, but isn't, and that immigration is a tiny % of the overall problem.
To focus on immigration as the entire issue, as happens quite a bit here, is fundamentally racist. And quite obviously so.
I honestly couldn't give 2 shits about enclaves. I live in a region where the australian government has dumped every refugee population since the 70s and uses it as a baseline for targeted welfare studies. This worst part of living here is the halal pepperoni.
No sane person is focusing on it as the "entire" issue, but it's one of the largest drivers, and it's not racist to notice that. To decry it as racist out of hand is precisely the problem.
Its not a "Huge" driver of housing prices, its a rounding error off the back of the fact that the states refuse to meet land release targets. Targets they signed up to. And its completely irrelevant to zoning issues.
Minimizing the actual issue in favor of reacting to race, man there's a term for that.
I'm all for the YIMBY and zoning reform push, but a) that's decided on the municipal level, b) change is slow, c) immigration rates can drastically change in very little time, if the feds decide. In Canada feds wanted to have their cake and eat it too: the population grew by over 3% in a year, but infrastructure at the provincial level (e.g. healthcare) didn't budge, and housing isn't building much faster than it was before.
If we understand that the issue with housing is inelasticity of supply, then it should be easy to surmise that other things can be inelastic: policy and the law. By contrast, immigration rate might as well be a push of a button.
Federal government gave billions of incentives to states to build more houses who in turn enacted higher density zoning and overrode the concerns of municipalities. And suddenly we have lots of houses being built.
Less immigrants makes the house situation better but not does not solve the problem. Having a continuous system for building lots of houses does.
Canada did this with a housing accelerator fund, for municipalities. Did not amount to much of anything. It's not clear if provinces can override but there's no political will for it. Without reading the numbers for Australia, I expect reform has been modest.
> Less immigrants makes the house situation better but not does not solve the problem.
You contradict yourself in the same sentence. The same result can be achieved whether improving elasticity or reducing the immigration rate. "the problem" is the affordability, not the elasticity. That is your just preferred vector.
Even if zoning is improved, you can't defy the laws of physics; housing will still be relatively inelastic, whereas immigration rate can be much higher.
Australia's population growth rate was less than 1% last year, basically on par with US. Canada's was 3%. Incomparable. No amount of zoning reform will be enough to handle that sustainably.
Unless your claim is that "supply and demand" is somehow irrelevant, the immigration rate is a knob that can be dialed down to reduce the severity of the problem. It's one of the easiest knobs to adjust too.
That's why people are frustrated, and understandably so.
Immigration keeps salaries low which is great for companies bad for young people.
Immigrants of a similar age want the same type of housing. Young people starting out cannot afford their parents home. They compete for the same resources. Older generations are least affected.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2024/11/11/vil...
b) Immigration isn't keeping salaries low. Companies are. Because they have eliminated unionisation and so workers have no means to demand for higher wages. And with so much remote talent companies always have a backup plan in case there is a supply shortage.
c) As you say they compete for the same resources. Now why can't there be more homes ? Because older people fight increasing density, refuse to support taxes on investment properties and are increasingly refusing to downsize once their children move out. Remember for many their legacy depends on high property prices.
It's crazy to me how many old people who self-identify as conservatives / capitalists have no qualms about using their political pull to get government muscle to kill competition in real estate using the building permitting process. Free markets mean free markets. Charlie Munger was right: it's all about incentives.
Capitalists when it comes to ownership. They've made the investments, so young workers should work hard and accept lower wages to pay them shareholder profits. Company taxes should be low.
Socialists when it comes to healthcare. They are old and fragile, so young workers should pay high taxes on their labour to help the old people needing socialized service.
Feudalists when it comes to estates. They are the rightful owners of the land they inherited, so young workers should go into debt for life to buy it off them so that they can cash out lottery money for selling their real estate. Or even better, cash rent money while keeping the property.
Corporatists... I can go on and on.
Which will be largely paid for and staffed by immigrants.
And yet, many workers do make higher wages. Why do you think that is?
It’s not that strange as one of the political parties basically explicitly protects business interests and oh boy did they profit. It’s political nihilism.
Is the population rising because NL natives are having more kids or because new people coming in?
Maybe it has something to do with the Ministry of Housing and Planning being abolished because the minister believed the "country was finished", or a minister telling a woman who asked how she was supposed to afford a home to "find a rich boyfriend", or all construction being blocked because the country has been violating NOx emission laws for decades, or an insanely high tax specifically on social housing, or...
We can kick them out for sure, but you won’t like the consequences.
Young people are not their base whilst old people who care about house prices are.
So it's in their political self-interest to not do anything about it.
One study found that something like 70% of the cost of owning a home in Sydney comes from zoning and land release issues. That is, a bit of reform in zoning laws and a heap of land being released could see a 1 million dollar home being available for 300k.
That said, so much of australias economy is based on the false premise that housing is a stable long term investment. If you dropped housing on its face you would probably bankrupt the country for a generation. That said, better now than later.
In either case you’re saying “make the number of houses correct for the number of inhabitants” - of course an obvious answer is “build more houses” but that can’t always work - San Francisco can’t remain SF at the density of Singapore. It’d still exist, but it wouldn’t be what it was.
You dont release enough housing to support 2% growth. (You also have zoning restrictions pushing the majority of housing prices)
It doesnt matter where they get the growth from, it could be baby bonuses, immigration, kidnapping migrant workers.
>San Francisco can’t remain SF at the density of Singapore. It’d still exist, but it wouldn’t be what it was.
I couldnt give 2 shits about some appeal to locale identity.
Similar situation in Australia and US. And most of it misplaced.
One major issue is trying to buy a first home where the blame goes towards immigrants. Instead of towards older generations where the problem really lies. They apply political power across multiple levels of government to affect everything from planning, taxation, inheritance which systemically prevent young people getting into the market.
Likewise upwards mobility and income inequality gets blamed on immigrants instead of the wealthy.